Hole in fuselage found as Alaska jet returns to Sea-Tac

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, December 27, 2005

A passenger photo shows the cabin of the MD-80, which landed with a foot-long gash in its fuselage caused by a ground accident.

A passenger photo shows the cabin of the MD-80, which landed with a foot-long gash in its fuselage caused by a ground accident.

Photo: Jeremy Hermanns

Image 2 of 2

Jeremy Hermanns takes a photo of himself as the Alaska jet he was on makes an emergency descent from 26,000 feet.

Jeremy Hermanns takes a photo of himself as the Alaska jet he was on makes an emergency descent from 26,000 feet.

Photo: KOMO 4 NEWS

Loss of pressure forces airliner to land

1 / 2

Back to Gallery

An Alaska Airlines jet with a foot-long gash in its fuselage was forced to make an emergency descent from 26,000 feet and return to Sea-Tac Airport Monday after the plane lost cabin pressure.

The National Transportation Safety Board said late Tuesday that a baggage handler for the airline admitted that he accidentally hit the plane, an MD-80, while it was parked at Sea-Tac Airport -- and did not report the accident.

Alaska spokeswoman Caroline Boren confirmed Tuesday night that a ramp vehicle driven by a contract baggage handler for Menzies Aviation made contact with the jet before it left Sea-Tac.

The Alaska Airlines plane, which was en route to Burbank, Calif., landed safely and none of the 140 passengers was hurt.

Jim Struhsaker, an investigator for the Seattle office of the NTSB, said the baggage handler did not believe that he had caused serious damage to the plane. It was raining at the time and the worker said it was hard to see, Struhsaker said.

The worker was not identified.

Related Stories

It is not clear if the jet was hit by a baggage cart or by a baggage belt machine, Struhsaker said. He said the blow to the jet's aluminum skin may have resulted in a "crease" rather than an actual hole. But the damaged area would have been weakened and then may have split open once the plane was at altitude, he said.

The cabin of a commercial jetliner is usually pressurized to what a person would experience at about 8,000 feet above sea level.

John Nance, a retired commercial airline pilot and air safety analyst for ABC News, said Tuesday night that even had a hole the size of a dime been punched through the fuselage while the plane was on the ground, the pilots would not have known anything was wrong until they began their climb to altitude and instruments showed a problem maintaining cabin pressure.

If the hole suddenly got bigger, the plane would then have experienced a rapid loss of pressure, he said. Based on the airline's report, that is what happened.

Pilots are trained for that kind of emergency, he said. They quickly take the plane to a lower altitude, usually about 10,000 feet.

Even though this kind of incident would be a "precautionary emergency," the plane would not break up in flight just because of the hole in the fuselage, Nance said. About the worst thing that could happen on a well-maintained plane, he said, would be for the damaged area to blow away to the next line of rivets.

Passenger Jeremy Hermanns, 28, was returning to Los Angeles with his fiancée after visiting his parents in Issaquah for the holidays.

Shortly after the jet took off, he said, his ears started popping. As a general aviation pilot, he knew that was a bad sign. Depressurization followed, he said, and passengers heard what sounded like the loud whirring of the engines.

"It's like having a leaf blower next to your head," he said. "Everything was magnified."

At one point, from Seat 28D, he looked back at his fiancée, who was four rows behind him on the crowded flight. "It was probably a look of fear," he said.

After the oxygen masks dropped, he said, passengers grabbed them to "breathe through those flimsy masks."

Some passengers cried. Others, he recalled, were stunned. He said panic filled people's eyes.

Hermanns credits the flight crew for remaining calm and helping passengers. "I think (the pilot) even apologized for the inconvenience," he said.

Once the plane landed at Sea-Tac, the cabin erupted with passenger applause.

Alaska Flight 536 left the airport for Burbank at 3:54 p.m. The flight crew reported a loss of cabin pressure about 20 minutes into the flight, airline spokeswoman Boren said. Oxygen masks deployed for passengers, and the pilots made a rapid descent, as they are trained to do in such an emergency, she said.

The plane landed at Sea-Tac at 4:53 p.m. Boren said.

The hole in the fuselage was found after the plane landed. The MD-80 was taken out of service, and the passengers were later flown to Burbank on another Alaska Airlines plane.

Boren said the hole, measuring about 12 inches by 6 inches, was just aft of the top part of the forward cargo door on the MD-80. The hole was about 4 feet below the cabin windows, she said.

Before leaving for Burbank, the same plane had carried passengers to Sea-Tac Airport from Las Vegas. The pilots of that earlier flight did not report any problems, Boren said. The flight from Las Vegas landed at Sea-Tac at 3:18 p.m.

On Tuesday morning, a Port of Seattle police officer investigated the incident as a possible hit and run, according to a source. The source said Alaska Airlines requested the police investigation.

Alaska Airlines' baggage-handling operations have not been without controversy in recent months. Earlier this year, the airline eliminated more than 400 unionized baggage-handling jobs at Sea-Tac Airport as part of a cost-savings move. That work was outsourced to Menzies Aviation, which is based in the United Kingdom.

If a safety violation is determined, it will not be the first time that a Menzies employee had broken serious safety rules since the company took over the Seattle ramp's operations in May.

Through November, the Port of Seattle had issued eight ramp citations to Menzies Aviation for issues such as speeding in ramp vehicles and parking in the wrong spots, according to an Alaska Airlines report.

Menzies also has had 10 security violations for issues such as attempting to push an access door open before it unlocked and not watching the door until it closed.

"While aircraft ground damage at Sea-Tac increased following the Menzies transition, the number of such incidents has dropped significantly since the initial transition," according to the Alaska report, filed Nov. 30. The report went on to say:

"None has resulted in a level of damage requiring regulatory reporting. From January to November 2005, Alaska has had 13 aircraft damage incidents caused by ramp activities in Seattle, compared to 11 incidents for all of 2004."

The report by the airline came after an investigation by KING/5, which said it found Alaska Airlines had 17 ramp incidents in 2003, 15 in 2004 and 72 in the first nine months of this year.